Report: No Link Between Cell Phone Usage And Cancer

BERLIN, GERMANY - OCTOBER 05: A member of the Piratenpartei (Pirate Party) speaks on an iPhone before a press conference October 5, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. The Piratenpartei is seeking to capitalize on its recent success in Berlin city elections as recent nationwide polls indicate that 8% of the German population would supoort the party in federal elections. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

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DETROIT (WWJ) – A recently published report in the British Medical Journal says there is no link that cell phones cause cancer.

Danish researchers looked at more than 350,000 mobile phone subscribers in a nationwide study, and examined their health records from 1990 to 2007. They found no evidence that the risk of brain tumors increases for mobile phone users.

“We didn’t see that these people had a higher rate of getting any kind of cancer, not from central nervous system tumors or brain tumors, in comparison to the non-subscribing Danish population,” said Patrizia Frei, a research fellow on the study with the Swiss Tropical and public health institute in Sweden.

Overall, 10,729 tumours of the central nervous system were diagnosed in the study. But among people with the longest cell phone use — 13 years or more — cancer rates were nearly the same as for non-subscribers.

The findings, however, could not rule out the possibility of a “small to moderate increase in risk” for very heavy users, or people who have used cell phones for longer than 15 years.

There are about five billion cell phones registered in the world, a figure that continues to rise sharply along with the average amount of time spent using them.

Dr. Otis Brawley, Chief Medical Officer for the American Cancer Society, said anyone concerned about the link between cell phones and cancer should use an ear-piece or speaker-phone setting, and hold the phone away from your body.